Sure, you want to buy baby chicks this year, but what if you only want pullet chicks? None of those nasty crowing roosters? If so, you're like a lot of people. Corvallis, for example, has an ordinance forbidding roosters in town, but hens are okay.

The problem is that the feed stores normally have straight-run chicks. That is, boys and girls together. What do do? Time's a'wasting, since the baby chicks will hit the stores in a couple of weeks.

Learning chick sexing is difficult and disgusting. See this video from Dirty Jobs if you don't believe me!

Well, that was fun, but what does it have to do with do-it-yourself chick sexing at the feed store? I'll tell you. The feed store will have at least one of these breeds for sale:

• Rhode Island Reds
• New Hampshire Reds
• Production Reds

All these breeds have something in common: The chicks with chipmunk stripes on their backs are females! Well, maybe not all, but at least 95%. And if you pick only the ones with well-defined chipmunk strips, it's more like 100%.

Most people don't know this, so the chicks aren't likely to have been picked over by other customers. Just make the clerk pick out the ones with the racy stripes because "they're pretty," and don't take no for an answer. Voila! Sexed chicks at straight-run prices!

(People have asked me, "What do you mean, 'chipmunk stripes'?" You'll know 'em when you see em. Most of the chicks won't have any stripes down their backs at all. On some, the stripes on their backs will be faint, and others, they'll be clear. Get the ones with the most clearly defined stripes.

And if you think that's clever, you ain't seen nothing yet. It's one of the least useful facts in my book, Success With Baby Chicks. Just by reading this book, you become a chick-rearing expert. Imagine how much more pleasure you'll get when you're completely successful every time.

I read hundreds of poultry books, extension bulletins, research papers, and magazine articles when researching this book, stretching from 100 years ago to the present day. I discovered many useful facts and techniques that have been forgotten, like the chipmunk-stripe trick. And it's all been reduced to 155 clear and straightforward pages. You will reap the rewards of my years of work in a couple of hours!

Buy the book before you get your chicks, so you know what to do, not what you should have done.

When the economy started nose-diving, I told myself, "During bad times, you want more irons in the fire. This is a great time to expand my publishing business." So I went from four titles to thirteen in about eight months.

I had it all planned out. During bad times, people start yearning for simplicity and more control over their lives, and there's always a back-to-the-land movement. So I published three classic back-to-the-land books: Gold in the Grass, Ten Acres Enough, and We Wanted a Farm. These, I figured, would do very well. I also republished a motley collection of books just because I loved them, though in many cases I felt that maybe no one else would.

So what happened? A couple of my labor-of-love books became mainstays of my publishing business, while the back-to-the-land books have been relatively disappointing. Only Ten Acres Enough was anything to write home about, but even its modest success was eclipsed by Fresh-Air Poultry Houses, which instantly became my #1 seller, and A Thousand Miles up the Nile, which has nothing whatever to do with any of my other books!

So it just goes to show, you never can tell. You have to swing at the ball a lot more times than you hit it, so you should give yourself a lot of at-bats, rather than counting on a home run on the first swing. Heck, I almost didn't publish Fresh-Air Poultry Houses because it's sort of eccentric, but I told myself that it's eccentric in a good way -- charming and thought-provoking, and in touch with natural thinking -- and it's a good thing I did.

Seth Godin has an interesting blog post where he shows a chart by Tim Burton of all his failed projects -- lots and lots and LOTS of them. Even now, only a fraction of his projects actually get released.

So keep swinging, and don't bet the farm on any one venture. Most of 'em won't get very far, but some will.

Last year, in a fit of self-indulgence, I reprinted my first book, Through Dungeons Deep: A Fantasy Gamers' Handbook, which I wrote in college and was published by Reston Publishing in 1982.

Rather to my surprise, it has been selling briskly, and in spite of being a straight reprint, without a single word having been changed in 28 years, I'm getting testimonials like this one:

Robert,

Just a note to wish you and yours a happy holiday, and to tell you how much I enjoy "Through Dungeons Deep" (the reprinted edition). Although I'm a DM with many years of experience, I still find new and insightful ideas in every chapter. The bits about your personal gaming group and characters are especially fun to read as well. I look forward to recommending it to my friends, who will undoubtedly enjoy it every bit as much as I have.

Best wishes,

Todd Rooks
Barberton, OH

I'm grateful to be living in the Internet age, where self-publishing allows works that have long been out of print to find new audiences. I hope to bring many more books to light, delighting people with both their nostalgia value and their timelessness.

I'll be attending the M.E.W. multi-genre science fiction/fantasy/anime/role-playing/whatever convention at the Red Lion in Vancouver, Washington this weekend.

I'm sharing a table in Artist's Alley with Beth McBeth -- I'll be pitching my Heinlein-esque SF novel One Survivor and my role-playing handbook Through Dungeons Deep, and Beth will be displaying her artwork. I'll also be offering free writing and publishing advice to anyone who's interested.

I'm also giving three panel/workshop sessions:

1. Self-Publishing for Fun and Profit (12/31, 5 PM)
2. Turn Your Hobbies Into a Career (1/1, 11:00 PM)
3. Role-Playing Without Rules (1/2, 1 PM)

M.E.W. con is only in its second year, with a projected attendance of just 500 people, so it should be pretty intimate. Anime fandom appears to be the dominant theme, and plenty of people will be attending in costume.

Hope to see you there!

Admission is $40 at the door for all three days (12/31 - 1/2) or $15-$20 for a single day. For more information see the Mewcon Web site.

Here comes a new auction! Every week, I auction off a copy of every book in my Norton Creek Press catalog. Two people got books for a penny in the last auctions, which closed yesterday.

Why do I do it? This is promotion, pure and simple. Bargains get people to try things they otherwise wouldn't, and I have faith in my books. Try one, and you'll want more.

And when a few more people start noticing the auctions, and as word gets out that these are all great books, the days when you can get one for a penny will be over. That's good for me but bad for you. So get some insane bargains before they're all gone!

Let's go nuts and do it all again! Last week I auctioned off a full set of Norton Creek Press titles (thirteen in all), which sold for low prices, with savings ranging from 10% to 99.93% of full price -- one book sold for a penny!

So a bunch of people got great bargains, especially considering how good these books are (I won't publish a book I don't love). And I'm doing it again this week. Why? I think that a consistent presence in eBay auctions will eventually attract enough bidders that prices will become reasonable. So far, though, it's a bargain-hunter's paradise.

So check out my auctions. Christmas is coming! Buy books for your friends and don't let them know you got them at a bargain price!

Usually, when I auction books on eBay, they sell for a pittance, but hope springs eternal, and I try again from time to time. So, please, take advantage of my unwillingness to learn and bid on my book auctions! You'll get a real deal this way, most likely.

All my most popular books are here, including "Fresh-Air Poultry Houses" and "Success With Baby Chicks." As I write this, the prices are a penny apiece.

I'm back from Kumoricon Portland's big anime (Japanese animation) convention. Don't know how many attendees there were, but it was probably in the 5,000 range.

Karen and I have been anime fans since we discovered the work of Hayao Miyazaki in the mid-Eighties, first by accidentally stumbling upon his amazing (but never released in English) Future Boy Conan animated TV series in Spanish on Univision.

We caught the anime wave when it was just starting. It's gotten awfully huge in the meantime. I can't even keep track of the names of all the animated movies and TV shows coming out of Japan, let alone watch all of them. (I'll make some recommendations in a minute.)

Anime differs from American cartoons largely through the concept of "more": more violence, more romance, more elaborate costumes and settings, more character development, more plot, bigger explosions -- and more viewers.

The assumption is that people of all ages watch anime, so the themes are much more like prime-time shows than Saturday morning cartoons. Anime has a strong element of love interest. Even kid shows tend to revolve around a complex web of crushes and unrequited love, which I find charming. Shows aimed at older viewers add sex appeal, which to me has a Fifties/Sixties retro feel, like Diana Rigg in her skin-tight jumpsuit in black-and-white episodes of THE AVENGERS. And all this means that romance is in the air in most shows, whether open or implied. I think it's the romantic elements that make anime so much more popular than mainstream science fiction with female viewers.

In anime conventions, it's more or less expected that you will be in a costume representing one of your favorite characters.

This year I have chosen to be an air pirate from Porco Rosso, a film I despair of describing, other than it involves fictional air pirates off the coast of Italy in the late Twenties, who are constantly threatened with being put out of business by the main character, Porco Rosso, a bounty hunter and reluctant hero.

The air pirates were on the whole a middle-aged lot, I came to the con dressed as one of them. This choice also had the advantage that it could be put together from off-the-shelf items: a flight suit, leather helmet, goggles, silk scarf, military shoes, etc. Many fans take infinite pains to make costumes from scratch, but I'll bet they don't have a farm!

In addition to wearing costumes evertwhere, there is a great deal of picture-taking at anime cons, with everyone striking their best poses or demonstrating their trademark moves. As an air pirate, I of course posed with my "captives."

This con has everything: masquerade balls, role-playing games, multiple video-viewing rooms, panel discussions, workshops on a zillion topics, a dealer's room with all sorts of merchandise, an area for artists to hawk (and create!) their wares -- you name it.

It was in the Portland Hilton, which was a shame, I thought, because I hold a grudge against the Hilton for living in the Dinosaur Era and not having wireless on every floor, just so they can stick you for ten bucks a day for their pathetic single Ethernet cable per room. This is the 21st Century, guys! Among the four of us, we had five WiFi-equipped devices. Dinosaur hotels like the Hilton compare poorly with, say, Motel 6, which seems to have had free WiFi forever.

WiFi aside, it was a lot of fun, and I'll probably be there next year, and take an artist's table while I'm at it, with stacks of my books -- One Survivor (my science fiction novel) and Through Dungeons Deep my book on fantasy role-playing games, plus whatever wares we come up with from our Artsy Android T-shirt and gift venture.

Recommended Shows

Among my favorite shows are:

• Anything by Hayao Miyazaki. Start with Totoro if you like children's movies, or Castle in the Sky otherwise.
• The Big O. Possibly the most incompetently-named show ever (the show's creators had no clue that the phrase, "the big O" actually meant something), this show falls into the genre of film noir, along with The Maltese Falcon and Bladerunner. Deeply textured, with lots of mystery, double-dealing, beautiful settings, femme fatales, giant robots, you name it.
• Cardcaptor Sakura is completely charming and very well-written. The main plot (Sakura has to retrieve all the magical cards before they cause trouble) is almost overshadowed by love-interest subplots. Everyone in Sakura's class has a crush on somebody. This show is aimed squarely at the tastes of ten-year-old girls, and has a very different feel from the more macho shows aimed at boys.

Getting my action-packed SF novel (One Survivor) into print got me back into fiction-writing mode, and I've been putting in some time on the sequel, Tainted Gold. Not one to hold out on my loyal readers, I've posted what I have (the first 80 pages) here.

Tainted Gold has many of the same characters as One Survivor, but I structured it differently. There are several different groups of people going after the gold ("What gold?" you ask. Read One Survivor). Each group has special knowledge that the others really need but don't have. No group is aware of all of the others. It's been fun to write so far.

As with my other science fiction, it reads sort of like early Heinlein, or maybe Bujold. I don't know why, it just happened.

I started writing seriously (that is, "for money") when I was in college. For me, the keys to mastery were:

• Write a lot. I became much more fluent during the course of my first book, Through Dungeons Deep: A Fantasy Gamers' Handbook, (Reston Publishing, 1981) which covered how to play Dungeons & Dragons and role-playing games in general. When I started out, I set myself a quota of 1,200 words a day and just couldn't do it. At the end, I'd upped my quota to 4,500 and beat it every day. (I have since had a number of 10,000 word days.) Going over my old work, it seems that the extra speed was a free bonus, involving no loss of quality.
• Big works are easier than small ones. I think that's it's infinitely easier to write a 100,000 word novel than a hundred 1,000-word short stories or even four 25,000-word novelettes. Similarly, it's easier to write a nonfiction book than a series of articles that add up to the same length. Coming up with new themes is harder than running with what you've got.
• Write for a reason. I come from a storytelling tradition, which means that connecting with my audience is important to me. If I lose them, I've screwed up. I also wrote for money from the beginning, because I was broke. Writing is hard, so you need a goal in mind.
• Writing is hard. It's harder than anything. After a hard day's writing, I sometimes lose the power to speak coherently. If that happens to you, you're doing something right.
• Pick up the nuts and bolts as you go. Perfectionism is for editors. Just keep going. Get to the end before you rewrite. Keep notes, but leave the earlier passages alone. A lot of people use perfectionism and revision as an excuse to never finish anything -- or to never start. There are editors everywhere, so your stuff can be professionally washed, waxed, and detailed after the fact. So get to work!